


A wider path

by captainhurricane



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 06:50:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1418894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Soldier at the exhibit. (Post-credit-scene spoilers!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A wider path

**Author's Note:**

> teeny-tiny drabble.

No attention is paid to the steady, yet uncertain shuffling of a figure dressed in dark colours, not when the Smitsonian is bustling and the Captain America-exhibit is once again packed with people. What do these people care of the darkest of times or the darkest of hearts, when surrounded by a living embodiment of all the bright and good that is (should be and has never been) their world, their nation?

The Winter Soldier cuts a different figure than all of them- than the Soldier himself when he marched through torn streets with a gun in his hand and mind only a singularity, narrow path leading to one thing- and one thing only. The Winter Soldier does not remember, than is the truth; but there is only so far you can push a human being until the human being starts fighting back and Bucky Barnes has always been relentless and his own man, even after decades of not being Bucky Barnes, but a weapon and a tool for those who used him.

The serious face of Bucky Barnes stares at the Winter Soldier and the Winter Soldier stares back. He has not seen his own face in decades except from the cover of his cryo-chamber (listed under the things he doesn’t remember, that one moment of pure, humane panic as he is locked inside the chamber and sent into a sleep that might last for a week or a month or five years) so he doesn’t know how it has changed- if changed at all- but the human-part of the Winter Soldier is telling him the truth.

At the corner of the Winter Soldier’s mind, the man on the bridge looks at him and calls him a friend and by this name- Bucky, the name belonging to a fallen war hero, a sniper and a best friend to the symbol of freedom, funny when the Winter Soldier himself is a symbol of absolute control. At the corner of the Winter Soldier’s mind the man on the bridge looks at him unwavering, ready to go down with the fiery blaze of the helicarrier. And something moves, takes effect. 

The Winter Soldier is not Bucky Barnes again by some miracle or magic or the good will of Captain America (the one man who believes in the goodness of a human heart even when the world around him does not), but the Winter Soldier’s heart is a human heart and a human heart is not so easily broken apart and tossed away.

A cold winter wind tore Bucky Barnes away from the world and the resilient human soul might just be the thing that brings Bucky Barnes back.


End file.
